


three nights a week

by diaghileafs



Category: The Hour
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drug Use, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 14:50:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1174378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diaghileafs/pseuds/diaghileafs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'She could set her watch by him, a thousand watches because his faces are never the same – she’s never sure with timeline he’s on; one where his world is bright colours and racing hearts or one with rain and grey skies – she doesn’t know which one is reality for him. He pops pills; Fluoxetine and LSD are interchangeable, her lips stay pursed around whiskey and she screams into the empty bottles.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	three nights a week

**Author's Note:**

  * For [satterthwaite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/satterthwaite/gifts).



> originally posted on Tumblr. Written to 'Trois nuits par semaine' by Indochine.

_We’ll always have Paris._

Another corny line from a film neither of them have ever seen, and Lix doesn’t care. It’s always this movie or that, one poet or another with Randall; they live their lives in the shadows of American noir, rehearsing and rehearsing behind a curtain that will never go up. He murmurs monologues into her neck until they become white noise against reality, his mouth tracing the words of Keats and Cummings on flesh.

But it’s true, Paris never leaves him and so it never leaves her.

She could set her watch by him, a thousand watches because his faces are never the same – she’s never sure with timeline he’s on; one where his world is bright colours and racing hearts or one with rain and grey skies – she doesn’t know which one is reality for him. He pops pills; Fluoxetine and LSD are interchangeable, her lips stay pursed around whiskey and she screams into the empty bottles.

There are days when they don’t leave their flat, his flat: a dingy basement plastered with band posters, her desk too big for it, and his drums too loud. He says he loves her, he says it again and again because it can never feel enough.

And there are days when he can’t bear to look at her, let alone touch her. Days are spent apart and they bleed into one. They never ring each other, too proud for that, will let themselves wind up their clocks like  _they_ never happened, one of his fantasies.

That never lasts for long though.

—-

 She will have to buy her own cigarettes.

The flat is silent and freezing cold as Lix slips out of bed, scouting the room for her bra; the only remnants of the previous evening being cigarette butts which had been tossed haphazardly into various ashtrays located several metres away from the bed, and the stench three bottles of whiskey leave in their wake - the majority drunk by her apparently, head pounding and sore with the midmorning sun streaming through the window. Her hands grab clumsily at the bottle of wine on the floor, red pooled on the floorboards, and she takes a swig, wiping her lips with the back of her clammy hand, before drowning a pair of jeans and a shirt of Randall – underwear forgotten.

She leaves him sleeping, curled up in the duvet like a child. It’s not the first time she’s wanted to walk out on him.

Loving and being loved is habit, just like their other vices.

—-

 _You’re tired I think,_ he says into her hair and she doesn’t disagree. Croissants and Bastille fireworks seem a lifetime ago, a dusty film reel in the back of the cupboard. She wants that passion again; the fire, the bruises, when his blue eyes were bright with nothing but her. Now his eyes aren’t bright at all.

He never wakes when she crawls out of bed in the morning – the rhythm of his ticking never changes.

—-

 _I don’t love him. I don’t love him_ is what echoes in the paper walls of her bedroom when her cheeks are creased by unfamilar pillows, and she feels thirteen again; petals of schoolgirl daisy chains.

She rolls onto her back and slips her hand between her thighs, counts to thirty. The doorbell doesn’t buzz.

—-

"You have to stop doing this, you know, you can’t just keep fucking me over."

"You love me."

"I never said that."

He unfolds his leathered body from the doorway, zips and buckles to move over to her, slinking like a cat, cupping her curls into fists and kissing her too easily. He always kisses her too easily.

"You didn’t have to."

—-

It’s  _Pernod_ and new wave running through them, skin to skin, his old cassettes and her threatening to break them under her heel. He skims a finger across her lips and she bites his cheek. It’s Paris. It’s for now.


End file.
